


Bright Against the Shadowed Stream

by ShadowEtienne



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen, but they don't feature in the story, friendship fic, mentions of Nimrodel and Amroth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 13:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18074354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowEtienne/pseuds/ShadowEtienne
Summary: Mithrellas makes a chance encounter wandering the woods one spring evening, and a friendship is formed that will change her view of the world.





	Bright Against the Shadowed Stream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allonsytotumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsytotumblr/gifts).



Once, before the Sindar and the Noldor came to the Golden Wood, when Mithrellas was yet young, she and Nimrodel had walked the streams at the start of spring to see the new blossoms, white and soft in their green beds. In the years since their cousins from the West had arrived, Nimrodel had become distant and sad. She had made her home by the border river, and kept to their own people, but for one. Mithrellas saw the bond of caring that had grown up between Nimrodel and Amros, the Sindarin King, but Nimrodel herself was torn.

 

Mithrellas did not know how to help her friend, and so, when spring came, she wandered alone along the streams, half hoping to come across Nimrodel in a state more like her former self, where they could laugh and dance and sing to welcome the spring. The shadows of the evening were beginning to creep along the banks of the streams, and Mithrellas was beginning to resign herself to returning to her own home without seeing her friend, when the sweet strains of singing reached drifted to her above the stream.

 

The voice was not familiar, nor was the song, but Mithrellas was curious. She crept along the bank until she spotted the source of the voice sitting among the flowers in a clearing. Mithrellas was uncertain if the finely dressed young lady who sang among the flowers was Sindar or Noldor, but she was certainly not anyone who Mithrellas had ever seen before. Her hair fell in tousled moonlight waves to pool on the ground about her, and there were blue and green jewels set in silver about her waist and hair. Mithrellas watched, transfixed by the singer’s beauty and the soft clarity of her voice.

 

Suddenly, the singer turned, and their eyes met. Mithrellas almost bolted, but the singer smiled at her, eyes curving to match her mouth, and she called out in Mithrellas’s own Silvan tongue, “Hello friend! Come and sit with me? Have you come to enjoy the first blooms of spring as well?”

 

Mithrellas tentatively stepped out into the clearing and walked to the singer’s side. Her voice in speech was just as fine as it had been in song, and Mithrellas was a bit startled to be welcomed. As if seeing her uncertainty, the singer introduced herself, “I am Celebrian, daughter of Galadriel, and yet new to these woods. I have found few friends of my own years here, but the spring blossoms are friends in any land I’ve travelled to.”

 

Mithrellas was startled, but she sat down on the grass beside Celebrian when she patted it. Mithrellas replied in Silvan as well, relieved that she would not have to struggle through the language that she had not learned from infancy, “I am Mithrellas, a daughter of the Golden Wood.”

 

Celebrian smiled even more brightly at her, and said, “Mithrellas, it is good to meet you.”

 

Mithrellas was surprised that they talked for many hours of little things, and of their worries and hopes. They watched the moonlight dance across the stream and talked through the night. It saddened Mithrellas that Nimrodel would not understand, but there was a comfort in knowing that she and Celebrian both only wanted a peaceful home where the blossoms were safe to bloom in spring, and they could learn each other’s songs.

 

All that spring, and then into the summer and fall, they met by the banks of the stream. Mithrellas improved her Sindarin, and Celebrian learned more of the way of the woods. She told Mithrellas more of the ways of the Sindar and the Noldor, for her father was the former, and her mother the latter. Mithrellas shuddered at the stories of war and destruction, but she welcomed the reminders that they were not so different after all.

 

 

In winter, Mithrellas ventured in to the city where the Sindar and the Noldor who had come to the Golden Wood lived for the first time to meet her friend. It was a beautiful place, full of lights and song, and for a moment, she could not understand how Nimrodel could find so many objections to it. There were many signs as she walked through the lights with her friend that these were a people prepared for danger though, and as Celebrian walked with her to the edge of the city, she asked, “Is it really so dangerous even in the Golden Wood that they must always be so prepared?”

 

Celebrian looked sad and distant for a moment, and then she murmured, “There is much fear for them, even here. We have fled many wars now, and there is hope but not guarantee that we can have peace here for a while.”

 

Mithrellas pondered these warnings, wishing that she could bring the sense of peace that she’d had for so many years to her friend, but she too was beginning to worry. There were whispers of something from outside of the wood that came from the mountains and she hoped beyond hope that there would be safety for many centuries to come.


End file.
